FDR and the Modern Presidency: Leadership and Legacy

Partly due to his leadership, it has defeated all serious challenges to its way
of life. Even the worst despots pay lip service to it tenets. It has prevailed
in part because of its ability to satisfy the material needs of its citizens.

If Roosevelt was incorrect about the origins of the Great Depression, why
has the welfare state survived? First, Roosevelt was successful in changing
people's expectations toward government. Government became not the
enemy of liberty but the guarantor of people's economic rights. When
problems arise, many expect the government to solve them. Second, once
a program is initiated, it develops its own constituency, making its elimination--or even substantial cutbacks--extremely difficult. Finally, the very
wealth created by the free-market system makes overt poverty in any
segment of society unacceptable to most Americans. There is a broad
consensus that providing some sort of a social safety net is a fundamental
task of government.

Despite having been proven wrong about the weakness of the free market, Roosevelt would no doubt be pleased to look back on the years since the
Great Depression. Democracy has flourished, there is no "paternalistic
system" that guides the economy. Yet, the harsher aspects of capitalism have
been softened. Few citizens are ill clothed, ill housed, or ill fed. The
government is much stronger than it once was, and therefore is more able
to meet any future crises that might befall the nation. And the presidency
that Roosevelt helped establish is the center of the country's political life.

Franklin D. Roosevelt, "First Inaugural" ( March 1932), in The Public
Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Vol. II ( New York: Random
House, 1938), pp. 11, 15. See also Arthur M. Schlesinger, The Crisis of the Old
Order ( Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1957), p. 8; and Thomas H. Greer, What
Roosevelt Thought: The Social and Political Ideas of Franklin Roosevelt ( East
Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1958).

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